I am going on an adventure into the world of chair making. I have always wanted to build a windsor chair. I am starting out making a dining chair in a sort of windsor style. I will be using whatever I have on hand for wood as I dont have any idea how this will turn out I dont want to waste any money if its not going to work. The seat will be air dried beech and the legs and back out of air dried white oak. I will also be using some oak reclaimed from a stair rail that came out of my parents church parsonage. I know traditional chairs are made from green wood but I have ZERO experience with that so I'm using what I know. Anyway, here is the template I made and the seat blank. That's as far as I've gotten lol.
I also made this leg mortise reamer for this project. More info in the project section if anyone is interested. Figured I'd put this here too so its all in one place.
Had a bit of shop time tonight so I made up the other half of my taper rig. Used an old no.5 iron and a chunk of beech. Reamed the hole to size with my reamer and bedded the iron at the same angle as the taper of the hole. Works perfect!
I had a GREAT morning in the shop. Bluegrass on the radio and tools in my hand make for a wonderful morning. Got the main mortise holes for the legs drilled. They are not exactly perfectly angled but good enough for who its for (lol me). Im really trying to free myself from my normal constraints with this project. Normally I am so worried about screwing up a piece of wood or messing up a tool that I really started to loose the enjoyment of woodworking. With this im just saying F it and going for it. Its really made the process much much more enjoyable for me and I am loving it. I also spend some time on the lathe without relying on my carbide tools. I have never used standard lathe tools but had some old ones laying around so I just went for it. I did one test leg in some very old oak and it turned out surprisingly well! Make woodworking fun again!
The pic of the brace setup is deceiving, the angles are not THAT far off 😅😅
After spending what seemed like forever on the lathe today I have 4 legs im sort of happy with. I think they may be too bulbous.......if that's the right word. Im gonna stop messing with them for now or I'll just screw them up. Not bad for my first time ever trying to match turnings!
Couldn't stop thinking about how much I didn't like the big bulb on the legs so I went back into the shop and fixed them. I like them much better now! Made the bulb smaller and tapered it down to match the lower leg. Seems to flow better now
Back spindles shaped. Perfect? Absolutely not, but im happy with how they came out. Definitely some difference in taper, size etc but I wasn't really shooting for perfection with these, i like the variation in handmade stuff. These are not fully seated or oriented the exac way they will be so the will look better in the end. Next I need to drill holes for the side posts that I will turn to match the legs and then onto carving the seat. Still debating on how I will accomplish that one.
